More than 500,000 without power as Fiona batters Canada with heavy rain, strong winds
Powerful storm Fiona knocked out power to more than 500,000 customers in Atlantic Canada Saturday, damaging homes with hurricane-force winds and heavy rain as
Powerful storm Fiona knocked out power to more than 500,000 customers in Atlantic Canada Saturday, damaging homes with hurricane-force winds and heavy rain as it made landfall as a big, powerful post-tropical cyclone.
The U.S. National Hurricane Center said the center of the storm, now called Post-Tropical Cyclone Fiona, was crossing eastern Nova Scotia and as of 5 a.m. the storm was about 160 miles northeast of Halifax.
More than 415,000 Nova Scotia Power customers — about 80% of the province of almost 1 million — were affected by outages Saturday morning. Over 82,000 customers in the province of Prince Edward Island were also without power, while NB Power in New Brunswick reported 44,329 were without electricity.
Although the storm had weakened somewhat as it travelled north, the NHC said it was carrying maximum winds of 90 miles per hour and barrelling north at around 26 mph.
Experts predicted high winds, storm surges and heavy rainfall from Fiona, although a gradual weakening was forecast during the next couple of days, the storm was expected to maintain hurricane-force winds until Saturday afternoon, the NHC said.
Rating: 5